As part of my work in the world to create a culture of sanctity, pleasure, and wholeness for Black femmes, girls, and women, many people have come to know me as Rev. Pleasure––a moniker I created after graduating from seminary in 2016 and becoming a founding member of the sex tech start up O.school. There, in addition to being the COO and Director of Community, I served as a “Pleasure Professional.” My curriculum focused on unlearning shame––particularly shame that stemmed from religious trauma and dogma. I chose this moniker purposely because I knew it had a potential for shock value and to subvert the very harmful and long-lasting idea that a Black woman faith leader could not embrace both her spiritual and sexual selves and still be seen as worthy and legitimate of leadership.

During my time in seminary, my studies focused on Sexuality and Religion, Womanist Theology, and Pastoral Care. I know firsthand and from my professional encounters that patriarchy and religion have been colluding to create generations of acquiescence in and subjugation of Black women, femmes, girls, and non-binary people. We see this through sexual abuse and exploitation, the undermining of our intelligence, and relegating us to background figures. While the statistics regarding sexual violence within spiritual contexts is unknown, there is evidence surrounding the suppression of sexual abuses and silencing of survivors within the Church. Black women, femmes, and LGBTQ folks are good enough to uphold structures such as the Black family, the Black Church, and the Civil Rights Movement, anonymously and without fanfare, but not to lead them. Black women account for 80-90% of Black Church congregations and yet only occupy 10-20% of leadership positions. In order to create a culture of sanctity, pleasure, and wholeness for Black girls, women, femmes, and non-binary people, we must dismantle patriarchal violence at the center of organized religion and transform it into a sanctuary of healing and justice.

For years, I have been building a womanist/divine feminine framework for social justice movement leadership and formation—one where patriarchal violence occurrences are obsolete. This can be seen in my social activism work where I provide counter narratives to misinformation about sex and sexuality to the community, or as the Assistant Director for Prevention and Response at Spelman College where I directly supported survivors of sexual violence and developed data driven curricula that centered pleasure, agency, and healing for the entire college community. I have always lived an intersectional and interdisciplinary life. It came both from necessity and my own intellectual curiosities. Neither would allow me to only see things as “single-issue struggles,” because Audre Lorde urged, “we do not live single-issue lives.” My undergraduate degree in Human Services was a blend of psychology, sociology, and social work that ignited my desire to address the whole person, and unbeknownst to me at the time, grounded me in a Healing Justice framework.